eldiente

First, name dropping for who uses what and for what reasons isn't really a convincing argument. Just about any name brand cam on the market is going to safely hold a fall when properly placed, even on 5.hard terrain. I've been down at Indian Creek for the past few weeks climbing on all types of gear. A few thoughts. 1.) 3 cam units (TCUs/C3s) don't do very well on soft sandstone. Several locals claim to have pulled bomber C3 placements at Indian Creek. I was a bit skeptical as normally I'm a big fan of C3s on granite and basalt, however I had a green C3 fail on me last week in a body weight situation while at IC. Beware of the sandstone! 2.) Master cams aren't perfect but in my mind they are a solid small cam. The bigger sizes are too flaccid so I'd say blue-orange is my master cam rack. In Smith tuff or pods of Basalt nothing is better. 3.) Trigger wires on Master cams get snagged in the crack at times making them hard to remove, I could care less as I'll make my second deal with it. :-) Oh back to the name drop thing.. I watched a guy send the " Optimator" yesterday using master cams in the tips section. But oh wait, master cams suck and this guy was a total moron because nobody that climbs hard trad uses master cams. But wait, this route isn't hard so never mind... My rack: C3s from purple to green (for basalt and granite) Master Cams Blue-Orange. BD C4s. Grey-#6. -Nate

What a great shot! That pitch is fantastic, and like Pazzo said, very short.

Trip: Squamish - Freeway Date: 7/15/2011 Trip Report: Been in Squamish for the past month or so. Lots of fun as usual, here's a some beta for Freeway. (Sorry, no climbing pics, left the camera on the deck) View of the Chief from my home at the Squamish Yacht Club. With a good pair of binoculars one can watch the action on the Grand Wall while sitting in the cockpit. Freeway. 5.11D 12 pitches. A bit surprised, this route is burly, wild and a good workout. The grade is stiff for Squamish, when compared with other 5.11 crack climbs in Squamish. For a reference point, routes like Crime of the Century (Smoke Bluffs, 5.11C) feel about as hard as the 5.11a pitches on Freeway. We climbed it after a good spell of rain, maybe this is why it felt so hard? Both of us took falls and Jacob had to French Free around a few wet parts. The other noteworthy thing that sticks out for me is the techy face climbing, I was expecting more pure crack work but many times the cruxes where where the cracks ended and committing moves had to be made pawing up smooth slabs or tipped out laybacking. P1. 5.10D. Skipped it due to wetness. Climbed scary 4th lass bush thingy to climbers right with fixed hand line. P.2 5.11b Sandbag. Crux is moving left where the crack ends and just praying something good will appear. There is no magic jug coming out of this move, just more insecure tips and brass nuts once you get stood up. P3. 5.10 fists. The daylight crack. Cool feature. Move blindly right from belay to bear hug this flake. Long fist crack awaits. Exciting climbing with only one big cam on the rack. The name makes sense once you look through the crack and see your mate belaying from the other side of it. 4 inches and sustained. P4. 5.10. Traverse down and right on bolts. Not that easy as the bolts are well spaced and a fall would be no good. P5. 5.11C Long pitch, crux tips laybacking in a beautiful corner system. Many small cams. Take my first fall on this pitch when a foot slips. Bitch! P6.5.11a More of the same, 180 feet. Relief comes near the end when you move left on run-out but fun face climbing. The face climbing is 5.10ish and a real hoot after so much laybacking. Belay below crazy roof. P7. 5.11D. Short bouldery pitch pulling over a steep roof. Severely over-hanging and much exposure. Boulder problem moves hit when upside down trying to stick a rattly hand jam and moving left. Good gear. P8. 5.11. Short traverse around and over the roof you just came over. One of the wildest pitch's I've ever been on, mostly jugs but not getting pumped out (or just plain scared) is the crux of this, turn the roof and keep moving on good bolts, face climbing with lots of air under the boots. Note that there is a jug by the fixed pin that you see from the belay. Have faith and move to it without monkeying around with extra gear. P9. 5.10C fingers. Short right leaning crack. Kinda hard with tired arms. P10. 5.11. Another short pitch. Harsh slab boulder problem with the the potetinal to break an ankle. Brass nuts an RPs sort of protect the move. P11. 5.10 Chimney. A bit wet and not much gear but you can get in there and wiggle around without risk of coming out. No wide gear needed. P12. 5.10D. Short bolted boulder problem right at belay. Slap up left and make the clips, cruise up easy 5th to the trail. Gear Notes: Doubles up #2. One #3, maybe a #4 if you want pro for the fist crack. Triple finger sized gear. Bring RPs and Brass nuts. Bolted belays. Approach Notes: 10 minutes from the car.

If you are Spanish, 5.12 limestone counts as moderate. We got passed by a male/female Spanish team that was climbing 5.10+ terrain in their approach shoes, they didn't even have climbing shoes on their harness.

GroupOn is a giant Ponzi scheme, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year and are nowhere near profitable. Check out their IPO financial statements, they take in tons of cash but spend it all on marketing to the point that they are very much in the red. Investors are keeping their doors open by pumping cash into the bizz. For the local business it can be a double edged sword. The GroupOn for Casa Naranja expired on Thursday so half of Portland was there trying to eat. They ran out of beer, half the menu items were unavailable because they ran out of food (!?) the wait staff was rude because they were slammed busy serving cheap-skate Portlanders, and the Fries took an hour to come out. So yeah all that traffic is nice, but now I just wrote a negative review of them online and probably won't be going back. I did buy the GroupOn for the body wax, I'm real smooth now.

Petzel just posted some really good pictures of Taghia on their site here. A few guys from Petzel were there earlier in the year opening a new route above town with Enzo Oddo. That place is so pretty! [img:center]http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5025/5679213323_5f1278d8a6_b.jpg[/img]

For most of us, rope weight isn't the deciding factor in a successful climb. However I'll say that fat ropes just aren't as much fun. I always feel more agile when leading on a skinny cord vs fat. If budget is an issue, I'd climb on old cams and beat-up draws but still spend the extra for a thin rope. Clipping a nice skinny cord feels so good! That said, I like a 9.7 or 9.8 for all around crag use, seems to last about 2 years with about 70-90 days of use. For alpine or long routes, I like 8.9-9.2 and seem to get 2-4 years of life. (Sadly I don't alpine climb as much as I'd like) I'm a bit conservative with ropes and retire them before I really need to. The other thought is how cheap ropes really are when you think about it. Ok $250 a rope that lasts 90 days. That's $2.70 per day of climbing. Usually a day of cragging sets me back at least $40 in gas. So that said, splurge and buy a skinny rope and have more fun.

Ivan you'd be stoked, there is TONS of potential for new aid routes there, most of the big climbs go up on aid and then get bolted for free climbing. There isn't much crack, from reading the topos it looks like people hook entire pitches on lead and stop every so often to drill a bolt. OR if you really have to climb crack, there is gnarly 5.13 gear only route that goes through a roof crack called "African reality." The roof is so big you can see it clearly from the village a few miles away. Aside from the 5.13 roof pitch, the route looks like miles of poorly protected limestone off-width. Given how sharp the rock is, I think you'd need to wear chainmail to survive that route.

Trip: Taghia Morocco - Au nom de la reforme Date: 6/3/2011 Trip Report: In early May, Stephanie I took a two week trip to Morocco with a one week trip to the Taghia Gorge in the High Atlas. Taghia is a magical place and a dream for climbers, this has got to be some of the best big wall climbing in the world. If you took Zion Canyon and attached it to Yosemite you'd get close to the scale of Taghia. If you like climbing big walls on clean rock away from the crowds, this is the place to be. Although the climbing is sporty (bolted) Taghia feels like alpine climbing to me; no airplanes dropping you off at the base of the climb, no gondolas to whisk you to the cafe at end of the day, and no rescue service. Just climbing rocks in the middle of nowhere Africa with lots of Mint Tea and all the Laughing Cow cheese you can eat. View out the front door. I'd like to say we climbed some crazy routes, but unfortunately we had a run of bad luck that thwarted our efforts. Lost luggage, bad beta, stomach flu, flooded streams, and all kinds of logistical hassles that come with traveling in a developing country. After so many problems I was happy to have climbed anything at all even if they were the "bunny slope" routes of the area. After losing 15 pounds due to African stomach bugs, I had no push, weighing 135 makes climbing real easy but I didn't have the energy for hiking or the longer routes that required hauling. Routes we got up or tried to get up. Grades are based on what we found in the hand written journals at the Gite (guest house) and my humble opinion. Logistical beta lower. * "Au nom de la reforme"- 5.11 300M +200M of low 5th class. Sustained and perfect! * Possible new route* on Ifrig "South East Corner" Left of" Belle Berbere", Solo. 300M 5.9. *Attempt at Belle Berber, off route bail. *Attempt at unknown route left of Canyon Apache, lost on approach, scary stream swimming. *Unknown route left of Canyon Apache. 5.11- or 5.10+ish 400M. Au nom de la reforme. 5.11 300M +200M of low 5th class. We spent out first day hiking around the Valleys drooling at all the walls and trying to figure out what to climb. Not an easy task as there is hundreds of routes in the journal at the Gite, the topos are hand drawn in Spanish or French so trying to make sense of it all was a bit stressful. We picked a route to the summit of the obvious tower in front of the Village, on the topo Daila Ojeda had written "fantastic!" That's a good recommendation coming from a girl who climbs 5.14 on Spanish limestone. What a good start to the trip! After a few approach pitches the route goes striaght-up a clean head-wall with sustained vertical face climbing in the mid 5.10 range with a few short 5.11 sections. Reminded me a lot of the upper headwall of Levitation 29 at Red Rocks but just a bit steeper and being limestone, WAY more fun. I fulfilled a lifelong dream and got to climb a tufa on the last hard pitch. The face climbing came to an end on a 5.10+ pitch and a nice tufa was off to the left. I could have inched over and latched it, but just for fun I got a "running start" and did the all points off dyno to grab the tufa and swung my feet out. Climbing stuff like that makes me want to sell my trad rack and move to Spain. The summit ridge is a bunch of 4th and low 5th class terrain to reach the summit. A few cams could be used but mostly just running it out and belaying off of blocks or bushes. On the summit we got our first taste of the afternoon thunderstorms that happen just about every day. The temp dropped to the 40s, wind, rain, and lighting much like you'd get in the Rockies during the summer. Not too bad as the rain let up after about an hour, however the descent is down a dry (wet) waterfall system that tuned into a mile long slip and slide, sketchy. Gear. Bolts with bolted belays. Optional medium cam rack for approach pitches and summit ridge traverse. Approach. 1-2 hours up the right side of the tower. Stream crossing 15 minutes from the hut. Bring sandals and leave them after crossing stream so that you can switch into approach shoes. Hiking off in sandals is tough, very rugged terrain. Descent. Off the back (facing away from village) Down climb 10M from summit to a bush with rap slings on them. You can rap from here with 70M rope, the topo says you need doubles for this rap but a single 70M worked fine. Walk climbers right to get back into obvious gully that you came up, steep exposed gully down climbing. Watch out for rockfall from goats. Possible to leave pack at the base of the route and snag it on the way down. Possible new route on Ifrig "South East Corner" Left of" Belle Berbere." Solo 300M 5.9. On a rest day I went up and did what might be a new route on the shoulder of Ifrig. I say "might" as the local kids climb all over the place, I saw a little boy soloing in rubber boots. I didn't see any signs of previous travel but who knows. As a whole this wasn't a great route, sort of contrived as I didn't have a rope on and kept weaving to the left looking for the easiest terrain. After two approach pitches, the route starts 20-40M left of " Belle Berbere" in a nice corner/cracks system that went at 5.9ish for 50M or so. The crack was too sharp to jam but offered some nice stems. After this I moved left through some easy terrain to get into nice corner and block system that took me most of the way to the top. This area had the best climbing of the route with lots of 5.6 and a few steps of 5.8. I drew up a bad topo and stuck it in the guide next to a new topo for a multi pitch 5.13. As sort of a joke I put the topo in as "SE Corner" as it reminded me of that other wondering route that many of us enjoy soloing, The SE Corner of Beacon Rock. Hahhah.. I suspect some visiting Euro will take one look at my topo, frown and use the paper to roll a cigarette. Unknown route left of Canyon Apache. 5.11- or 5.10+ish 400M. Route goes up the left side of Canyon by the beam of sun on orange rock Not sure of the name or the grade of this climb, but starts left of the well-know Canyon Apache. Sorry not many pictures, we were battling heat, rain, and then cold. I thought this route was kinda rough, not really hard climbing but just a lots of whacky pitches, roofs, traverses and the like. The spacing between the bolts on this route got my attention, on two occasions you have to get 20-25 feet above tied off tufas on 5.10 terrain. The last pitch is an airy horizontal traverse (mid 5.10) to get to the top of the wall, falling here for the leader or follower would suck. Cool route but I wasn't having much fun with the weather that day. This is probably the easiest "good" route in the Valley. Approach. Short (1 hour) but not trivial. Canyoneering and swimming required up a narrow slot Canyon. When you come to waterfall blocking the way, look for a bolt to the right. Tie up some slings and French Free off this bolt and around waterfall. Descent. 2-3 hours down. From summit move far right on top of cliff before going down the last of the gullies. Down climb 4th class gully aiming for farm field behind huts. The hike in involves a lot of getting wet and climbing around waterfalls. Looking up the route, a party on the 2nd pitch ahead of us. Beta Beta Beta. I should have hired Ivan to write this TR, he could spin an epic tale of Moroccan traveling but I lack such talents. Suffice to say that traveling in Morocco is crazy. Just getting in a taxi is more adventure then you'd get in a years worth of climbing. With that in mind we had a really tough time planing this trip, there is a lots of internet chatter about climbing in Morocco but most of it is just "Joe Blow sent 5.14 in Morocco," not very useful for planing a trip. Taghia Overview. Taghia is a small village located on the East side of the Atlas Mountains. About 200 people live in this village at about 6,000 feet. The nearest town is a 3-5 hour hike or mule ride to another small town of Ahanesal. From Ahanesal it is 2-4 hour jeep ride over a high pass to the first "real" town of Azial. The terrain is incredibly rugged, there is literally not a flat bit of Earth to be seen within a 100 miles. The houses are built on stilts as there isn't flat land for a normal house. It is dry and cold, similar climate to Western Colorado. Taghia is ringed on three sides by limestone walls up to 3,000 feet tall with many other walls in adjacent canyons. From the village you are 15-minutes to 3 hours from the climbing, right out your door. Staying in the village is a real treat. You stay at one of two guest houses and the families legitimately seem glad to have you stay in their home. It is a great way to see the daily life of these people, they have a very hard life in such a harsh climate but they seem happy and I never saw any tension among them. Note that there is no market or anything to buy in this town, bring it all in. For gifts the children really need sandals, bring a few spare pairs to leave behind. Getting there. *Fly or take a train to Marrakech. Note the train from Casablanca to Marrakech is crowded and doesn't have much room for gear. *Option 1. Spend $300 US and hire an SUV from Marrakech all the way to Ahanesal, 8 hours. *Option 2, Bus from Marrakech to Azial (6 hours) Ask around Azial for a fruit truck to give you a ride to Ahanesal (2-4 hours $50-$150 US) *Once in Ahanesal a local will show you to a Gite and feed you ($20US) The father of the house will arrange mules for you. *Mules/hike-in 3-5 hours to Taghia. Staying there. *Language, they speak Arabic and French, not a word of English. *There are two Gites in Taghia, the mule driver will show you where they are. *Gites offer a mattress to sleep on, breakfast and dinner. ($15US) Bring a sleeping bag and pad in case they are full. *No need for tent or stove unless doing multi-day wall climbing. *Food. Breakfast is bread and jam. Dinner is soup, bread, cooked veggies and goat meat. They sever the same thing every day. (bland) Bring wall food and snacks unless you like eating dry loaves of bread for lunch. *Water. They offer bottled water but be aware that they have no way of recycling the empty bottles and burn them. Bring a filter or tablets. *No booze! Arabs don't drink or sell the stuff. Bring a flask. Weather. *Spring and Fall are rumored to be the best. Spring was nice as the Valley was still green and the waterfalls were flowing. *Weather was 60s in the day, maybe upper 70s in the sun. High winds were normal. *Afternoon showers were common, not a lot of rain but windy and very cold. During the storms I was wearing three layers. Climbing details. *Bolted limestone routes, most of the routes are 200M to 900M. Routes are put in ground-up so spacing of the bolts varies. *Rock is very clean, super sharp, mostly face climbing on vertical terrain with some roofs. Climbing tends to be sustained, not a lot of one-move wonders on the routes we did. *The journal at the Gite showed 200+ routes, most long routes with a handful of crag routes.Topos in French and Spanish. *Most of the routes are in the 5.11+ to 5.13 range, there is a half dozen routes in the 5.10-5.11 range. *There is a bunch of long adventure trad climbs on the ridges, up to 20 pitches long at 5.9 for example. Downside is that these climbs look really dirty following chimney systems. *Gear: Draws and small trad rack. Routes are mostly bolted but lack rap anchors for bailing, bring bail gear and cord. Most of the routes are walk-offs. *Helmet! Goats on top of the walls send rocks down, some lose flakes too. *New route potetinal? Endless. There is Half Dome size blocks of rock there that haven't been climbed. *Crowds, not really. There was 20 other climbers in the Valley when we were there although it seems like a lot of people all want to tick the same moderate (5.12) routes. *Bring sandals, almost all of the routes require crossing streams and in some cases swimming. Photos. More pictures here Girls get to ride the mules, the guys get to walk. Village life. Big Walls several 5.13 routes go up this. The Valley on the hike in. Gite down in Ahanseal Youssef Rizki's home where we stayed for 7 nights. The living room/den/dining room at the Gite. Marrakech insanity. Breakfast is the same every day. The beaches are nice, a good way to end a climbing trip.

Smith will be dry, I often climb there with 80% chance of rain in forecast and do fine.

Bump. Price reduced. $70. Valley season is coming right up, who want's a haul bag?

I bought this bag in March of 2010. Since then I've used for about 15 days of cragging but never got around to use it for any wall climbing. I just bought the Stubby from BD so this bag needs to go. The Bag is in great shape, no tears, scratches or worn webbing. This bag has never been hauled, only used at the sport crag. I'm in Portland but could ship it. $90 OBO natetack AT gmail .com -Nate [img:center]https://www.alpenglowgear.com/gear/images/bd_touchstone.jpg[/img]

Does anyone have any beta for where to buy cheap quick links? I see stainless quick links at the hardware store for $2, this compares to the quick links sold at the climbing shops that go for $9. The obvious question, are the quick links from the hardware store safe enough to use for raps? These would be used for descents, not for fixing permanent anchors at the crag. Any thoughts? -Nate

N00b= punter or chopper.

Super stoked that you guys finished up the route the I bailed on last year, well done!

Quick question the owners/mods. Why DID you bring Spray back? What value does it add to this board? I'm sure spray creates 70%+ of your traffic, but is driving up your site visits the end goal of this board? If I turn "spray" back on, I can see that the people who post in Spray most often also have almost no TRs or climbing related posts.

Before I go back to getting fat at my desk job. A lot of this talk is just academic, for most of us (myself included) a few extra pounds in the belly or in the rucksack isn't going to make any difference. I'm not real anal about gear weight, but I do notice gear that gets in the way and monkeying with gear eats away at climbing time. Examples of this that come to mind are packs that hit you in the head while climbing, shirts that ride up and leave an exposed gap for cold air by the waist, gloves that are hard to get off when wet, helmets that block my view etc etc. For these sort of things, I'd rather have gear that was a tad heavier but got out of my way when climbing.

Ueli Steck. " With my dietician I set my ideal body weight for about 67kg. When I climbed the Matterhorn I weighed 64kg. Which means I was both lighter and faster."

Second that, most people (myself included) could easily lose 5-10 pounds of body weight. 10 pounds is a lot, that's the difference between 2nd hand beat-up gear from eBay, and new fancy kit from your trust fund. Sort of reminds me of cycle racing, all this pressure to save weight on the bike but it always seems like the guy going the fastest is the one with the strongest legs. Soo nice out today, I'm going to go for a run with my fast shoes and shorts, maybe a t-shit if I go into the shade. I prefer cotton when sweating, feels softer when wet. -Nate

"Light and fast" is a marketing term cooked up by at a committee of sales people at a climbing company in a meeting trying to figure out ways to sell more product. "Every year we'll make our kit 5 gram lighter and tell the customer that they are slow unless they buy our light and fast product." I kid but all this gear talk takes away from the fun of climbing, like we need to buy new gear every year to have fun or something? Consumerism invades climbing. (Full, disclosure I have a rack of light wire gates and love um) What climbing companies don't mention is that you can go fast, light and cheap by simply NOT buying their crap. Rope, harness, fancy widgets, leave that crap on the ground and watch how fast your speed gets. People climbed liked this 50+ years ago and got up all kinds of routes real fast like. Funny how now we have have to buy MORE stuff to go light?

Grasslands for $5. For all the stink people make about the rate increase (from zero to $5) I feel like $5 is a fair price and the campground is noticeably cleaner. Split between a car load of dirty climbers and it comes out to be what, $1.25 per person? Yes, you can drive outside the fence and camp for free, however lots of people have been doing this lately and it damages the ground cover. Some of areas outside the fence are just big mud pits now from people driving all over. Please keep this in mind. Have fun! -Nate

Dude this is April Fools, I'm sure they'll have a good laugh if you call them up though.

For road-side Alpine walking like Hood I always work under the assumption that if I get tired, I get cold, the weather turns bad etc I can just turn-around and cruise back to the car. From anywhere on the South Side of Hood, you can make it back to the car in 2 hours or less. (Less on skis) Pack according to that. I should say that I'm sort of Nancy and only go up Hood with a good forecast, if the weather comes in I'm going to bail and go get a beer. My Winter Hood kit would be: Splitboard or ski (snowshoes maybe) Avy shovel and beacon (only if I have a partner, leave at home if no partner) Ax and Pons if going up anything steep, no need for Gates or Old Chute. T-shirt for hiking in and a R1 fleece type thing to put on over that. Light Puffy Light shell- Marmot Prcip jacket. Thick belay mits for the ride down. Thin gloves for hike-up Food for 8 hours of hard work. (IE Candy) 2 Litters of water. Cell Phone. If it was looking cold/nasty I'd bring one of those $10 metal bivy bags and a Pocket Rocket Stove to melt water in a emergency. Leave ropes, pro, and harness at home, they have no value. The snow/ice or whatever the hell they call that white stuff up there doesn't take pro well. A screw stuck into Hood rime ice would hold not hold a big fall, may as well just solo it or climb a less steep route.

FYI..This is bootlegged footage from this year's Reel Rock. You can pay $19 and download the full HD movie (really good flick btw) Supporting hard working filmmakers is always good karma. http://www.bigupproductions.com/

This should win the TR of the month contest, hands-down. Thank you for sharing on CC.com, it is really nice to see some good content and pictures. Nicely done!